With the boxing sport and video game genre at risk of irrevelance, EA Sport’s Fight Night Champion is looking to deliver a punishing comeback to its fight rivals. Can it deliver?
With the increasing proliferation of MMA titles, including EA’s own last year, boxing video game titles have mirrored their real-life counterpart, becoming increasingly marginalised in fight fan’s minds and struggling for relevance. One of the few EA Sports series that does not follow a yearly release pattern, has Fight Night Champion been boxing clever since 2009’s Round 4 or is the pugilist’s choice out for the count?
We won’t keep you in suspense – it’s absolutely the former. Champion provides a sense of reinvigoration rare for the sports genre, providing new features and gameplay designs that are practically unheard of in sports sims, while narrowing down the intensive, jargon or routine-heavy tasks that can stifle casual player’s participation.
From the moment you begin your Fight Night playthrough, it’s clear that things have changed irrevocably. Developers EA Canada forgo any menus upon your first encounters with the game, instead plunging you head-first into a bareknuckle prison brawl with white skinhead thugs.
You are Andre Bishop, a disgraced former up-and-comer fighting your pride, your career and your dignity. This is Champion Mode and it’s without doubt the biggest single player overhaul we’ve seen in any sports title for years.
This is Gus, the ‘Mickey from Rocky’ of Fight Night Champion
Champion Mode is a career playthrough like no other and easily the standout feature of the latest Fight Night experience. Replete with a Rocky-style diminutive elderly trainer, a crooked promoter and seemingly indestructible rival, the entire mode feels like taking part in your own Hollywood movie. No surprise when you consider that the mode was scripted by Monster’s Ball screenwriter Will Rokos.
In addition to starring in a rags-to-riches story that encompasses betrayal and loyalty, Champion Mode also doubles as an excellent training mode, with scenarios teaching players the essentials in seamless fashion – one event has player’s hurting their right arm and finishing a fight using only their left, while another opponent deliberately favours body punches throughout.
In addition to learning the ropes, players will never feel displaced from the series’ authentic presentation, as EA have made great strides to ensure a realistic take on your fictional boxer and opponents, even utilising ESPN video vignettes recorded specifically for the game.
Once you’ve finally put paid to your dastardly rival (we should hasten to add that after the opening sequence, the entire Champion Mode is optional), you won’t want for nothing, feature-wise. The latest Fight Night is positively stacked with options, while the basics of the core gameplay mechanics have been radically altered.
Full spectrum punch control is the main byword of Fight Night Champion’s fighting, while left and right triggers have been incorporated to modify the power (no more cartoonish haymakers) and target of your punches. EA’s own research discovered that players found it too alternate between left and then right punches, so arcing gestures are out and have been replaced by accurate flicks of the analogue stick will suffice.
In practise, it makes a huge difference, as any player will immediately feel as though their actions are making an immediate difference, while individual stamina bars reflect the dependence on a compendium of a variety of muscles groups.
With exhaustion a constant threat, knock-out blows feel well-earned, while the jaw-dropping slow-motion replays deliver a satisfying (though perhaps superfluous) crunch at the moment of impact, a guilty pleasure that never gets old.
Draped in the customary excellent presentation that befits an EA Sports production (a mix of soul and hip hop soundtrack feels perfectly positioned), a staggering wealth of boxers and venues, Fight Night Champion is not just the best boxing game of all time, it’s an ambitious game-charger that delivers a solid KO to its MMA fight rivals.
Format: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC; Developer: EA Canada
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